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The Carlyle Group will acquire a 35% stake in French cable giant Numericable for $1.4 billion. Numericable is a triple-play provider and has set a goal of connecting 80 percent of its current 10 million cable customers to its fiber-optic network by 2010.

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AT&T today introduced its gigabit GigaPower service to the Kansas City market in competition with Google Fiber, saying it has already hooked up its fiber-optic cables in some neighborhoods and plans to expand to two more localities. AT&T will also offer U-verse TV as part of a triple-play bundle with voice service.

For cable TV providers, 2008 is going to be about interactivity, according to this article. Time Warner Cable, for instance, will roll out a service to allow viewers to interact with ads in new ways. "If you're on the Web and you see an interesting ad, you just click on it. We're bringing that concept to television advertising, and we think it's going to be great for both advertisers and consumers," said Landel Hobbs, Time Warner's chief operating officer.

In the battle for triple-play customers, cable remains far ahead of its telephone and satellite rivals, a market researcher says. Fully 90% of homes with triple-play services are cable customers, according to Knowledge Network.

Telecom consumer advocacy group TeleTruth says Verizon offered DSL access over its old copper lines rather than installing fiber-optic cable. Verizon refutes the claim, saying it has spent heavily on building a fiber-optic network.